


Up in the Air

by SomewhereApart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love From OQ 2020, Outlaw Queen - Freeform, Outlaw Queen AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22710742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: Regina and Robin have worked together for a year and a half, and it's been awkward for a year and four months. Can a coincidental seat assignment on a long flight be the trick to finally easing the tension?
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73
Collections: Outlaw Queen Valentine’s Gift Exchange 2020





	Up in the Air

**Author's Note:**

> For @stargate_barbie. My apologies that it's only the first chapter—2020 has been a beast. lol

Robin doesn’t hate air travel, but he doesn’t love it either. There’s the traffic at the airport, the queue for bag-drop (where he inevitably ends up behind someone who has decided to pack their _entire_ life into their suitcase and has to drop everything and shuffle items from bag to bag right there at the counter to avoid overweight luggage fees), the queue at security, the queue at every food counter, the queue for boarding. Alright, perhaps he just hates queueing…

And then of course there’s the flight itself—getting your shoulder whacked by every large handbag that bumps its way down the aisle during boarding, or squeezing your elbows into a too-tight space because the passenger beside you has decided to hoard the armrests. Watching some selfish sod attempt to cram in bags far too large for the overhead while you’ve had to check yours at the gate because some hawk-eyed gate agent deigned it “too wide.” (Or worse, being told as you reach the plane doors that the overheads are already full.) Shitty food, and overpriced drinks, and stale recycled air.

The view is nice, and the solitude. But the process of flying itself, he could do without.

Today, though, he’s gotten lucky.

A year of work travel has left him with enough miles to finally qualify for status with the airline, and he’s managed to snag a free upgrade to first class. The bag-drop had been a cinch with its own separate queue and he’d breezed his way right through security. There’d been nearly nobody ahead of him at the Starbucks en route to his gate, his free checked baggage had meant he has only a backpack to carry on, and he’d finally been able to board with that first boarding group he’d always been so envious of as he stood around waiting for them to call his zone.

A man could get used to this, he thinks as he stretches his ankles forward to fill his extra leg room and sips his complimentary whiskey while all the plebeians schlep their way past him in search of empty bins and armrest rights.

He has a downright rosy view of air travel today—growing ever rosier as the window seat beside him remains empty while traveler after traveler boards and finds their way to their seats.

He hates late boarders—the ones who rush on at the last minute, juggling their bags, aghast to be told they have to stow one eight rows ahead of their seat as it’s the only space left. And they are always, for some reason, window seaters. Always requiring you to unbuckle the belt you’d buckled too soon and shuffle your way into the aisle while they shove and shove to fit that second bag into the under-seat space.

But today, he thinks, his luck will hold. After all, who wouldn’t take advantage of the early boarding and free cocktails that first class affords? Nobody in their right mind, he thinks.

He’s proven wrong.

There’s only one empty seat in the whole front of the cabin, so he knows the moment he sees her who his seatmate will be.

She boards with a garment bag (which she hands off to a flight attendant with a polite smile and exchange of words), an overnight bag that looks as chic and expensive as the rest of her (it’s leather, embossed with some sort of filigree pattern), and a designer handbag that looks just a bit larger than the one she usually totes to and from the office.

Regina Mills. Corner office with the big windows. Cold. Calculating.

Devastatingly attractive.

And she always flies first class.

He’s fairly certain she’s always thought him a bit of a tosser, but it hasn’t dimmed his crush on her in the slightest.

As he watches her stow her bag (still entirely oblivious to his presence), he can’t decide if he’s chuffed to bits to have her sitting beside him for the next several hours or downright terrified. They’ve never interacted outside of a work setting (although there was that Christmas Party of Too Much Wine that found them snogging in the copy room and then never speaking of it again), and he’s not sure if more time to chat will improve her opinion of him or just provide him more opportunities to stick his foot in his mouth.

He’s less than optimistic about his chances when she finally does look down at him, freeze, blink, and mutter a dry, “Wonderful,” before pointing to the empty seat beside him. “That’s me.”

“I had guessed as much,” Robin tells her, rising from his seat and stepping into the aisle to make space for her. It puts him close enough to smell her rich perfume (that’s going to drive him absolutely barmy; he’s mad for her perfume), and close enough to catch the way her lips purse slightly as she slips past him and sits.

He glances at her as he settles back in, clipping his seatbelt as she pulls her iPad and phone from her bag and then stashes it beneath the seat.

She does not look at him. Not even a second glance as she sits back and folds her hands over her belly, closing her eyes.

Well, then.

Message received, he supposes.

It’s sure to be an awkward several hours if they’re both expected to sit here in silence and pretend the other doesn’t exist. And honestly, what even is the point of that? Surely they don’t need to spend the whole flight chin-wagging but they could at least exchange pleasantries. Or even hellos, for that matter.

A moment later, the flight attendant appears beside their seats, cup of amber liquid in hand, and says softly, “Ma’am.”

That rouses her; Regina opens her eyes, offers a grateful thank you and reaches for the drink. Robin resists the urge to assist on the pass, simply easing himself further back against the seat to stay out of their way.

He can smell that it’s whiskey, so he’s impressed by the way she takes three quick gulps before cradling the drink against her chest and shutting her eyes again.

It occurs to him then that maybe she’s not just giving him the cold shoulder.

“Nervous flyer?” he asks curiously, and she cracks an eye open to look at him.

He glances pointedly at her drink; she lifts her head a bit and tells him, “No. Long weekend. I’m getting started early.”

Robin chuckles, knocking back the last swallow of his own whiskey. “Nothing too tragic, I hope. You look awfully dour; I hope you’re not off to a funeral or the like.”

Her mouth pinches, and then her expression smoothes, becomes neutral, cool, the way she looks across a conference table right after someone has said something she finds irritating but has to swallow for the sake of peacekeeping.

He wonders for a moment if “dour” may have been a poor choice of words, and thinks he ought to find some way to compliment her post-haste.

“No,” she tells him. “Not a funeral. A wedding. My mother’s.”

“Ah,” Robin nods, sympathetic. “Not a fan of our new daddy, then?”

“Do _not_ call him that,” she warns, and Robin holds up his hands, wondering at his ability to drop clanger after clanger the minute she walks within a meter of him.

“Apologies. That was rude of me,” he attempts to mollify. “Families can be difficult.”

“Understatement,” she mutters into her glass, taking another sip.

“And you don’t look dour; you look lovely. That was…” She glances over at him (her eyes are stunning this close). “I shouldn’t have said that,” he murmurs softly. “You looked irritated to see me, and I was really hoping there might be a reason other than my blundering idiocy to account for it.”

Regina smirks at that, huffing out a chuckle and shaking her head. “Sorry. It’s not you. I was just looking forward to a few hours of quiet before we get to New York. Lord knows I won’t get any once I arrive.”

“Ah, I see,” he says, feeling a bit less like a thorn in her side. “Well, then, I’ll leave you to your solitude.”

Something flickers across her face, something he can’t read, and she nods, murmurs a thank you and turns her face toward the window just as the flight attendant begins his safety demonstration.

**.::.**

Of all the seatmates in the world, it had to be him.

Robin Locksley.

Cocky, and too smart for his own good, with dimples that are quite frankly unfair in how attractive they are.

They’ve been working together for a year and a half, and she’s been avoiding him for precisely a year and four months. Ever since she indulged in far too much chardonnay at the company holiday party and ended up making out with him in the copy room.

She’d blamed those stupid dimples, and his blue eyes, and the way he needles right under her skin with his casual flirtation and his jokes. And the alcohol.

She can’t even remember quite how it had started, now—although she’s fairly certain mistletoe had been involved. One thing had led to another, and then it had been all soft, wet lips, and warm, insistent tongues, and his hands on her hips, her back, in her hair. Hot kisses down her throat and goosebumps up her spine.

Just the memory of it has her cheeks growing warm, even now, so she swallows another mouthful of whiskey and stares determinedly out the window.

However much their little liplock had affected her, it had _not_ been as memorable for him.

She’d pushed him away, breathless and tingly all over, and murmured that she needed to get home, get back to her son, that they couldn’t fuck in the copy room.

He’d just smirked and told her he wouldn’t dream of it, then given her another painfully soft kiss and let her go.

And then never mentioned it again.

Not a word, not a peep, just a smile and a nod when she’d walked back into the office on Monday morning. He’d been perfectly professional, nothing but cordial (he flirts with her, sure, but he flirts with _everyone_ ), and that had been that.

And it irks her.

She doesn’t get crushes, she doesn’t flutter like a schoolgirl. She is Regina Mills. She is smart, she is strategic, she has an order and a plan for everything in her life.

And that plan doesn't have room for butterflies in her belly over a few stolen kisses.

So. It irks her. _He_ irks her. And she keeps her distance, so that she doesn’t embarrass herself by staring a little too long at the stubble on his jaw, or standing a little too close so she can breathe in the woodsy scent of his cologne.

She’s not going to chase a man who isn’t interested in her.

But there’s no chasing required now—he and his dimples and his stubble and that cologne are sitting right beside her. _Telling her she looks dour_ , she thinks with a scowl and another gulp of whiskey.

She’d planned to spend her time in the air reading a book, maybe stealing a nap, losing herself in something other than the imminent misery of her weekend, and instead she’s going to spend it the way she always does when he’s around—vibrating like a live wire and hyper aware of every little move he makes.

At least he has the decency not to make this harder on her. She’d shut him down firmly (but politely, she hopes), and he hasn’t spoken a word to her since—something he continues even after the flight attendant returns to collect her cup before take off, even as the plane climbs higher into the air, even as they reach their cruising altitude and the seatbelt signs go off while the wi-fi turns on.

He doesn’t say a thing, and neither does she.

But she notices him. She glances—doesn’t stare, doesn’t even turn her head—and she notices. He’s in jeans and a waffled green henley that looks so soft her hands itch to touch it. He’s pushed the sleeves up to his elbows ( _Why is it so sexy when men do that?_ she wonders), the tattoo on his forearm exposed, the muscle there shifting slightly as he tilts his phone this way and that for the game he’s been playing since takeoff.

He smells good (he always smells good). Regina is always grateful not to be stuck in coach, but she’s especially glad today, because fate would no doubt have stuck them side by side regardless, and then she’d be close enough for their arms to touch or their knees to bump. For that cologne to surround her like a cloud instead of only wafting to her occasionally when he shifts just so.

As distracting as he is sitting beside her, he’d be infinitely more so pressed against her.

So. Thank heaven for small favors and wide seats and the thicker double-armrests of first class. If he’s going to torment her by existing, at least there’s a buffer.

Regina focuses on the book she’s been reading on her iPad, and tells herself to ignore his forearms, and his cologne, and his general _him_ -ness.

They’ll be in New York in a few hours, and then he’ll be gone, and she’ll be thrown into an entirely different and much less tolerable form of torment.


End file.
